


apocalypse (we've all been there)

by Wildehack (Tyleet)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The 100 (TV)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 23:12:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6097114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two hundred years ago, the world ended.</p>
            </blockquote>





	apocalypse (we've all been there)

**Author's Note:**

> A further entry in the archive of "stuff I forgot I wrote, but actually did." 
> 
> for singelisilverslippers, who asked for the original fusion, and for velvet-midnight, for reminding me this existed. <3

Two hundred years ago, the world ended.  
  
Some asshole opened the doors to a hell dimension, and hell pretty much took over. Bye bye humanity; hello monsters. The only survivors were left floating over a planet lost to the dark, thirteen different nations and one coven who combined their powers to mass-teleport themselves to Phoenix station. Using a combination of science and magic, the stations combined to form the Ark, humanity’s last outpost. The coven brought a single prophecy with them to the sky: in four generations, a chosen one would be born, and it would be safe to return to the ground. 

That’s the plan, anyway.   
  
Not that Buffy cares about the plan, or the survival of the human race. Pretty much all she cares about is her sister–that’s all she has left to care about, after the Chancellor floated her mom. Dawn’s been locked up for a year, and there are whispers about the prisoners, about another culling or something worse. 

So when Councilor Rayne comes to her and says that they’re planning to send the prisoners to Earth, that the Council hasn’t been picking up on any supernatural activity for years now and they’re planning to test the waters on the expendable portion of their population, Dawn included–Buffy takes the gun. “Don't you want a chance to save your sister?” he says, smiling strangely. “I can get you on the ship. All I need you to do is–shoot the Chancellor.”   
  
Buffy takes the gun, takes the guard uniform. This was supposed to be her job, before Giles killed her mom. She’d do anything for Dawn. Even die with her.   
  
*   
  
Buffy spends the drop down to Earth trying not to shake, trying not to think about the look of surprise on the Chancellor’s face when she shot him. The gun is a solid pressure against the back of her stolen uniform. Instead, she focuses on the kids strapped in next to her–she guesses they’re close to her own age, but they still seem like kids. One of them is Cordelia Chase, she realizes with a weird jolt. She’s a magic-user, the daughter of a Councilor. It wasn’t long ago that magic-users got an automatic stay of execution until after they reproduced–gotta keep those genes going. Things must be worse than she thought. Cordelia was having a spitting argument with an idiot who cut his seatbelt straps. (”Look, Cordy–looks like your dad floated me after all.” “Get back in your seat! Unless you _want_ to be smashed into a bloody pulp when we hit the atmosphere? I mean, I wouldn’t care, except that I don’t want to deal with strawberry Xander jam all over my shoes.”)   
  
The landing is terrifying, but no one dies. As soon as they stabilize, Buffy’s cutting her way loose, looking for Dawn. “Don’t open the doors!” Cordelia shouts, grabbing Buffy’s shoulder. “The air could be toxic!”   
  
“If the air’s toxic, we’re dead anyway,” Buffy points out, shrugging Cordelia’s hand away. “We might as well see the ground before we do.”   
  
And then Buffy sees her sister, and she stops paying attention to everyone else. It’s only been a year, but Dawn is taller, healthier. In prison she probably hadn’t had to eat half-rations. She looks stunned, and then Buffy’s hugging her tight, burying her face in her sister’s shoulder. “Your hair’s gotten so long,” she says stupidly, and Dawn chokes out a laugh.   
  
And then they open the doors, and Dawn takes that first step out onto the ground. Buffy has one hand out to hold everyone else back, to let Dawn have this moment–but her concentration is broken when something invisible hits her. She doubles over, falling to her knees. It feels like being invaded, like something ancient and malevolent is coursing into her and taking root.   
  
When she opens her eyes and takes another breath, she’s surrounded, Cordelia casting a healing spell, Dawn shouting her name, everyone else looking at her with utter fear, wondering if this will happen to them, too. “What happened?” Dawn is saying, familiar and panicky. “Are you okay?”   
  
“I’m fine,” Buffy says, and realizes it’s true. She feels fine. No; that’s not quite it. She feels _better_.  
  
She feels strong.   
  
*   
  
Anyway, yeah, Buffy gets superpowered up, or whatever. Nobody else seems to be, but that's fine--Buffy's totally cool with being special, particularly since the air doesn't seem to be toxic. And, well. S _omeone_ 's got to be in charge.   
  
Queen C and the idiot start up a loud argument about where they should set up camp, but before Buffy steps in to point out that maybe they don't get to decide, this skinny delinquent from Walden pipes up. Apparently she was a super genius prodigy or whatever, before she got herself locked up, and she can tell just by looking that they're on the wrong mountain. "We need to get to M-mount Weather," Prodigy Girl insists, and Cordelia at least seems to be taking her seriously. "We're looking at a twenty mile trek."   
  
"Great," Buffy says, loudly, putting a friendly hand on Prodigy Girl's bony shoulder, which makes the kid flinch. "Why don't you all hop to, while _we_ set up camp?"   
  
Cordelia sets up a traveling party of nerds and losers--including Fred, their four-eyed whiz kid--and it would be fine, except Dawn decides to go with them. Buffy doesn't trust any of these idiots as far as she can throw them. But hey. It looks like she can throw pretty far these days. "Stay safe," she tells her sister, and starts up the all-important work of making sure the rest of the camp knows that she's the head honcho. The girl who can lift up a tree trunk, one handed. The girl who was a guard. The girl who's going to protect them, come what may.  
  
See, she's figuring something out. This new strength? It wants to be _used_. She stabs a two-headed deer to death and drags it back to camp, easy as breathing. Heck, she could go for more--she's restless with energy, with her new, tireless body responding to the earth. (She hopes it's that, privately. Not just that she's good at killing.) Amy starts up a fire with her rudimentary spark of magic, and then Buffy's feeding everybody, convincing them to take off their Council-given amulets and toss them into the fire. They're just kids, all of them young and afraid and grateful. She's everyone's older sister. They'll go where she tells them, do what she wants them to do. She'll need them on her side, if she's gonna stop the Ark from following her down.   
  
Dawn comes back a few hours later, Cordelia and crew in tow--minus one. "Something dragged Oz off," Cordelia reports grimly. "Some kind of radioactive animal, or something, as soon as he crossed the river. We heard him scream. We couldn't get him back."   
  
"We're not alone down here," Dawn says, freckles standing out against her white face, and Buffy tries telling her that's nuts, it's just the fear talking.   
  
But, well. As soon as the sun sets they figure out that Dawn's right. They aren't alone. There's life on Earth, and it's pale, evil, hungry.   
  
Buffy turns one of the grounders to dust--literal frigging _dust_!--and the rest of the monsters look suddenly, shockingly afraid. "You better run," she yells, laughing into the dark, and it feels _good_ , feels _right_ , like something vital and miraculous and missing clicking into place.   
  
*  
  
"Correction," Buffy says grimly, standing up before her people. And they are hers--all of them, even Queen C. "We _are_ alone down here, in every way that matters. No one's coming to help. We trust each other, or die. We _fight_ or we die."   
  
She tosses Cordelia a stake. "Thus endeth the lesson."   
  
*  
  
Ten days later, Willow Rosenberg crashlands an ancient piece of shit craft into their camp, keeps the radio alive with a fumbling magic that she didn't have a day ago, either. "It's the Earth," she says, full of wonder. "It's waking things up in all of us--natural talents lying dormant in us. Our potential. It wants us to help."   
  
Cordelia speaks to the Chancellor. Who's still alive. He issues everyone on the ground a full pardon, and Buffy hates him a little bit more for it.   
  
About two hours after Willow fixes the radio, Oz comes back to camp, not dead.   
  
But different.   
  
*  
  
"There are people out there," Oz says, from where Buffy's had him chained up against Willow's protests.   
  
"People like you?" Xander asks, plainly repulsed, and Willow makes a furious sound, but Buffy doesn't move, keeps her gaze steady on Oz.   
  
"Like me, and not like me," Oz says, managing to look both exhausted and defiant. "Either way. Just people. We have to talk to them." 

Willow agrees. Fred agrees. Dawn agrees. Xander is violently opposed, and Cordelia abstains.   
  
"Fine," Buffy says, flatly. "We'll find someone to talk to."   
  
*  
  
"I absolutely forbid you to attempt it," the Chancellor says, staticky and insistent over Willow's radio. "It's too dangerous. You have no idea how old these creatures are, what secrets and experiences they might possess. You can't assume that strength will get you everywhere, Buffy--you are strong, but you can still be killed."   
  
"All it takes is one bad day," Buffy agrees, and turns the radio off.   
  
*   
  
The grounder they capture is wonderfully informative, once he gets hungry enough. All the torture they do before that doesn't help a thing, but the hunger makes his eyes go red, his mouth pale and tight, his body frail with needing. Buffy slices open her hand and holds it bloody and dripping just out of each, watches with a hot, murderous satisfaction in her belly when his face goes bumpy and vicious. "Look at my neck," she says, and smears a red line across her throat, making Willow gag in the corner. "All that blood just pumping away."    
  
He groans, lunges against his chains, and then laughs. A strange sound to hear from a monster. "Fine, fine. Ask your questions."   
  
"What are you," she says.   
  
"Vampire," he tells her, and grins.   
  
The vampire is over three hundred years old, and remembers life before the world ended, so really he's had a front row seat to the whole apocalyptic deal. He tells them that the Earth is sort of in a purgatorial state of mind. It’s been long enough, it turns out, for most of the r _eally_  Big Bads to wander back through the portals to more interesting hell dimensions. Which is why the Ark didn’t sense any big mystical energies anymore. What the big bads left behind is a population of mostly vampires. You know what vampires need to stay alive? 

Human blood. 

”It's got to be blood,” he explains, looking up at Buffy with an infuriatingly sly knowledge in his pale eyes. “It’s always got to be blood, Slayer.” 

“What’s a Slayer?” she asks, caught off guard.

He raises one scarred eyebrow. “Slayer, The? One girl in all the world? She alone will stand against the vampires, and the forces of darkness? Christ, maybe I have been dead too long.”   
  
He tells her about the Mountain: the underground castle where the Master lives, all his vampire children kept safe from the sun. He tells her about the Mountain's stores, and the hundreds of humans kept there, fatted calves, blood bags. He tells her there ARE other humans out there, somewhere in the dark. It would be 

The Mountain is an underground castle, kept safe from the sun. Hundreds of humans are kept in the Mountain’s stores, but there IS a human population on the ground, because there would have to be, for reproductive purposes. It would be a natural extension of the Mountain’s larder if it weren’t for the Slayer, keeping them safe.   
  
"I thought I was the Slayer," Buffy says.    
  
The vampire rolls its eyes. "Well, I suppose the last one's kicked it, if you're here." 

 

*   
  
Months from now, when Buffy meets the Commander, this will all be confirmed. ”It’s happened before,” the Commander will say, Buffy's stake at her throat. Unnervingly sweet dimples appear in her cheeks.  "A Slayer will die medically, but a witch or somebody brings her back. Then there will be two–-but the soul has already passed on. You and me, B? We share a soul.” She'll grin, mad and happy, and Buffy will fall a little in love. “What? You got a better system for choosing your leaders, or something?”)

*   
  
Weeks from now, when they finally breach Mount Weather, Willow will discover how to give a vampire back its soul. This is valuable. This is something they can trade.   
  
*   
  
Days from now, Buffy will meet a vampire who gives her a silver cross, and his good heart. She'll have to kill him, but she always knew she would.   
  
*  
  
“You’re not in charge here,” Giles shouts, when he finally reaches the ground.   
  
Buffy could laugh, if she weren’t still shaking, if Angel’s blood weren’t still on her hands. “Don’t you get it? Down here, I _am_ the law.” 

“You shouldn’t have to be,” he says in a wretched voice, because he is kind after all. Kind enough to forgive her for trying to kill him. Kind enough to forgive them all.   
  
“Then you shouldn’t have sent us down here in the first place,” Buffy says, and doesn’t hide her contempt.


End file.
